The Flynn Effect (1984) is a mystery, but whatever it is, it is making IQs, the common measure of intelligence, go up by 0.3 points a year.
James Flynn, an American who taught at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, discovered this when he compared the IQ scores of Dutch 18-year-olds in the 1980s to those in the 1950s. To his complete surprise Dutch children scored way better than their parents on the very same test! It had little to do with schooling since this was on a test of pure intelligence – no words or numbers were used at all. The Dutch were getting brighter!
When Flynn found that out he wanted to know if it was going on elsewhere. It was, in at least 30 other countries.
The Flynn Effect does not affect everyone at the same rate nor does it affect every part of the IQ test. It mainly affects the parts that have to do with reasoning, not the use of words and numbers. And it affects those with lower scores more, so it it seems to slow down over time.
A look at the scores on the IQ test given by the Norwegian army shows that IQs rose in the 1950s and 1960s but then started to slow in the 1970s and 1980s, coming to a complete stop in the middle 1990s.
For the same reason the difference between black and white IQ scores in America has grown smaller over time since at least the 1910s.
No one knows what causes the Flynn Effect. Maybe it is because people eat better. Maybe schools have become better (though that is widely doubted).
One interesting idea is that of Ulric Neisser. He says that the 1950s was largely a print-bound world. But now with television, ads and video games, children have to grow up constantly making sense of new and strange images all the time. That makes certain parts of the IQ test easier for them than it was for their parents.
What makes this all the stranger is that studies on identical twins separated at birth seem to prove that you are born with all but six points of your IQ.
What started Flynn down this road was race. He is a white American, but in his younger days he fought for equality between the races in America. He was even the head of a chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the 1950s.
Whites told him that blacks were born with less intelligence: IQ tests proved it! He knew that was not right, so he wanted to prove them wrong. He started by going through the American army IQ test that was the supposed proof (the one where Muhammad Ali scored only a 78). In time he was looking at army IQ tests from all over the world and saw the same thing: not only were black IQs going up, they were going up for everyone all over the world.
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There are lots of rational explanations for rising scores on IQ tests. But the most obvious reason is an increase in testing experience.
Since the beginning of the post-WWII period the use of standardized tests has exploded — worldwide. The SAT is a post-WWII development.
Thus, students at every age have become more accustomed to taking standardized tests and more skillful in their responses. Moreover, many people have had the awareness to realize it is possible to study and prepare for any test that is dreamed up by other humans.
You wrote:
“It had little to do with schooling since this was on a test of pure intelligence – no words or numbers were used at all. The Dutch were getting brighter!”
Your statement is laughable on every level. Did the testing agency find the test hidden in the trunk of a tree? Or did a group of psychologists dream it up?
Did every Dutchman from the 1950s through the 1980s take exactly the same test? Or, over the years, did the test-makers change and/or modify the questions?
Are the test-makers themselves untouched by factors that influence perceptions of the world?
IQ tests reveal many mental capacities of of the test-takers. The tests also reveal the limitations of the test-makers.
The US military uses the Armed Forces Qualification Test to sort its recruits. One section of the test examines a recruit’s abstract mental powers. It asks the test-taker to look at a drawing of an exploded shape, such as a box. On the page the person sees a a drawing of a six-sided figure laid out flat so that it looks like a cross. He is asked to mentally fold the 2-D figure into a 3-D figure and then pick the folded figure from a list.
Then the test taker is asked to unfold 3-D figures and choose their 2-D shapes from the list of A, B,C, D or E.
Like any mental exercise, it is easy to improve one’s skill at this through practice. But people do have limits. As do the people who make the tests.
From time to time flawed questions appear on the SAT. When they slip by the editors, it is usually some smart high school kid who spots the flawed question by getting his answer marked wrong, then challenging the ETS and showing he was right.
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What is interesting to note is that it can go backwards: it’s exactly what happened in my country (well, the whole ex-Yugoslavia). The recent IQ test results show that people are “less intelligent” than they were 20 years ago.
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I have been in government service all of my adult life (25 years Army, 10 years civilian). I can feel myself geting stupider every day.
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I also lived for a year in Bosnia. There may be a connection.
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Everyone knows experience leads to higher test scores. But more importantly, mechanisms of upbringing in contemporary society are devised to dumb down the young and not to develop their intellectual abilities. So differences in mental potential do not matter. Most of it won’t be used anyway.
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born a yugoslavian….in stolac….bih……sometime in early 79……i stumbled upon your site trying to determine the impossible claim of my mother…that my iq was 180….i generally have no difficulty with math, language….etc..etc….BUT i do have a difficulty accepting this high score….i wish i could examine the database of yugoslavian iq tests….from the 80s…..any suggestions…any1….
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My IQ is 500.
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Well, that would place you above Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein so… probably not.
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What’s with all ex-Yugoslavians here… ?
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